A Few Things: A Fulfilling Life, You Are Not Special, Long Distance Thinking, The Anxious Generation, Marko On Markets, What's Happening in Japan, Fixing Our Democracy, How To Know A Person....
April 2, 2024
I am sharing this weekly email with you because I count you in the group of people I learn from and enjoy being around.
If you missed last week’s discussion: Climate Systems, Where Is The Money Coming From, The Longevity Imperative, Unleashing AI for Yourself, Humanise, News You Missed, What's Next for Nvidia, BTC Endgame...
This week’s email is a little short since we are out in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Quotes I Am Thinking About:
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
- Henry Ford
“The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.”
- John Ruskin
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."
- Seneca
"Success is the sum of small efforts—repeated day in and day out."
- Robert Collier
A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out:
1. What creates a fulfilling life is the question this piece by Jason Cohen asks.
To begin, the author Daniel Pink had an interesting framework in his book DRIVE about what motivates people (it’s not money): Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.
But being motivated isn’t the same as being fulfilled. What might be missing from this: JOY.
We need lives and jobs where we can live at the intersection of the joy, our specific skills and their need in society.
How could do we find both our Joy and Skill?
Here are 7 prompts he recommends to get you started. I had fun thinking about these.
Even when I was a kid, I would ______, and I still find myself drawn to it.
When I’m on an extended vacation, I get itchy to ______; I just can’t help it.
My parents/friends always laugh when I start talking about ______ because I get so excited I can’t stop talking about it.
Whenever I ______, I get lost in the work, and feel energized (not exhausted!) when the work ends.
If I could go (back to) college, I would get a degree in ______.
I was surprised how much my peers praised my work when I ______; maybe I’m better at that than I thought.
Recently I was totally immersed, engaged, excited, and happy while doing ______.
2. You Are Not Special.
Watched this with my children.
This is an excellent high school graduation speech from David McCullough Jr., son of famous historian and author David McCullough.
He argues against the "everyone is special" nonsense narrative that seems to have overtaken high schools and little league fields across the country.
He replaces this narrative with a refreshing rendition of reality.
Here are a few of my favorite lines:
"If everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone receives a trophy, trophies become meaningless....We've come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We've come to see them as the point, and we're happy to compromise standards or ignore reality if we suspect that's the quickest way, or the only way, to have something to put on the mantlepiece...
Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air, and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you."
Being here in Zimbabwe has hopefully brought point home for kids.
3. This is a beautiful essay on Long Distance Thinking.
Having children was one of the best things that happened to me. It clarified many things. One of the intellectual benefits was that I learnt that if I couldn’t explain something to my 6-year-old, then I probably didn’t really understand it myself.
But in real life, we can often over simplify complex ideas. We often try to reduce problems and explanations down to two or three variables to make a compelling case. But the world and our lives are more complicated than that.
We often rush to find easy answers without taking the time to really think things through. This can lead to mistakes, especially when we're dealing with big, complex problems. It's like when you look at something a thousand times, and suddenly you see something new that you never noticed before. That's what happens when we really take the time to think deeply about things. Some knowledge and understanding only come with time and experience.
By the way, while we are discussing kids, this is a good twitter post on what we should teach our kids.
4. Two of my favourites combined to discuss the wellbeing of today’s kids.
Bari Weiss interviewed Jonathan Haidt about his latest book - The Anxious Generation - it’s about social media and its effects on kids’ mental health. This is a must listen for everyone.
It’s sad now that despite the obvious conclusions from all the research the barrier from removing kids from this poison is their own parents who quite simply lack the gumption to be strong for their own children.
As Haidt says, this is a coordination problem. Yet this stuff is worse than cigarettes. As this becomes more obvious to the mainstream, the conversation will shift but lets just hope it isnt too late for this generation kids – which some call now a lost generation or even “generation stupid”
5. My favourite market strategist Marko Papic at Clocktower Group shared his latest:
6. On the subject of shifting assets out of the US, Japan is an interesting destination for capital and the Money Maze podcast spoke to the team at Arcus who have been investing in Japan for 30 years.
In 1989, Japan represented 43% of the world’s stock markets. The eight largest banks in the world were Japanese, as were 7 of the world’s top 10 corporations. 10 years later not a single Japanese company made it into the top 10.
After an epic bubble and even more epic bust, today, 34 years later, Japan is the world’s 3rd largest economy, the world’s largest creditor nation, the second largest stock market globally, has the most undervalued currency of the major economies, and has the highest debt to GDP ratio of any G7 nation.
They reference that almost half of TOPIX trades below book and 40% of companies have no material research. They share their ‘bread and butter’ process of recycling the profits of appreciating stocks into undervalued firms (inspired by Buffett). They speak about structural tailwinds, shifting allocations to equities, TSE reforms to “shame” companies resistant to change, the relatively cheap yen, and where they are identifying value and investing.
Thank you Nicolas B for first flagging Arcus to me.
This one had me thinking about a lot of things. I loved how he served his ecosystem, questioned status quo, deeply integrated into the community, focused on his core strengths, and empowered those around him.
Really uplifting conversation.
8. Fareed Zakaria has just released his new book Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to Present.
It delves into the revolutions, both historical and contemporary, that have shaped our polarized and tumultuous era. The book explores the progression and backlash from 1600 to the present, highlighting the rise of classical liberalism, periods of rage and counter-revolution, and the impact of revolutions like the Dutch Republic, the Glorious Revolution in England, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.
Zakaria also discusses modern revolutions such as globalization, digital transformation, identity politics, and the resurgence of great power politics with Russia and China. The book warns about the threats to liberalism, the dangers of democratic decay, and the rise of tribalism and populism in the face of technological and cultural revolutions
He recently spoke to Tyler Cowen in a wide ranging conversation about his life, his work and book.
9. Looking ahead to the 2024 election, most Americans sense that something is deeply wrong with our democracy. We face extreme polarization, increasingly problematic candidates, and a government that can barely function, let alone address urgent challenges.
Maxwell Stearns has been a constitutional law professor for over 30 years. He is the Venable, Baetjer & Howard Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He has authored dozens of articles and several books on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the economic analysis of law.
He argues that our politics are not merely dysfunctional. Our constitutional system is broken. And without radical reform, the U.S. risks collapse or dictatorship.
The Framers never intended a two-party system. In fact, they feared entrenched political parties and mistakenly believed they had designed a scheme that avoided them. And yet the structures they created paved the way for our entrenched two-party system. that now undermines our basic constitutional structures, with separation of powers and checks and balances yielding to hyper-partisan loyalties.
He spoke to Michael Shermer on the Skeptic show on how we repair our democracy.
He shared, that we need a shift to a Parliamentary System with Proportional Representation. We need to transition towards a parliamentary model incorporating mixed-member proportional representation. This system, by allowing voters to cast two ballots—one for a district representative and another for a political party—promises to cultivate a multi-party landscape that reflects a broader spectrum of public opinion and mitigates extreme polarisation.
This approach could significantly democratize political representation, making the legislative process more inclusive and reflective of the electorate's diverse views.
By introducing a parliamentary system with proportional representation, the U.S. can facilitate the emergence of multiple political parties that better represent the nuanced political ideologies within the electorate. This diversification can dilute the polarizing us-vs-them mentality, fostering a political culture of negotiation, compromise, and coalition-building.
Cultivating a Culture of Political Inclusivity and Coalition Governance. A multi-party system where no single party is likely to secure an outright majority, encourages political actors to engage in continuous negotiation and compromise, prioritising common goals over partisan victories. This cultural shift could revitalize American democracy, making it more adaptive, responsive, and attuned to the complexities of contemporary societal challenges.
B. How To Know A Person
Just finished reading David Brooks"How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen”.
It’s a beautiful book and gave me a lot to think about. I highly recommend it.
It emphasises the importance of social skills, particularly the ability to genuinely understand and see others. Brooks underscores the vital role of recognising and appreciating the individuality of others.
He starts by categorising people into two types: "Diminishers," who fail to see others as individuals and often use them for their own ends, and "Illuminators," who have a genuine curiosity about others and the skill to understand them, thereby making them feel respected and acknowledged.
Brooks suggests that most people overestimate their ability to understand others. Research indicates that even close friends and family members accurately read each other's thoughts only about 35% of the time. This lack of understanding often leads to stereotyping and misjudgments, contributing to a sense of being misunderstood or invisible.
He gave this beautiful speech a few months back on the book, that will serve as a good introduction to the ideas:
He makes the following key points:
Take The Journey to Emotional Openness: Deeply engage with your emotions and human connections, they will help you live a more fulfilled and complete life.
The Importance of Being Seen: Being acknowledged as a unique individual with inherent value can reverse feelings of isolation. Seek to really see others.
Practical Skills for Deepening Connections: He outlines essential skills such as active listening, empathetic engagement, and the ability to ask probing, thoughtful questions that invite deep sharing and understanding. Choose curiosity, respect, and empathy towards others, especially those with whom we might initially seem to have little in common.
Here are a few great questions we worked on as a family, that I intend to use with friends.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
If we meet a year from now, what will we be celebrating?
If the next five years is a chapter in your life, what is that chapter about?
What’s working really well in your life?
What has become clearer to you as you have aged?
C. News and Charts You Might Have Missed
1. A Economist/YouGov poll found that 46% of Americans finished zero books last year and 5% read just one last year. Out of the 1,500 American's surveyed in the poll, only 21% read more than ten books.
If you read or listened to only one book in 2023, then you read more than 46% of Americans. Reading five books puts you ahead of two-thirds of U.S. adult citizens. Readers of 10 books are in the 79th percentile, while Americans who read 20 or more books read more than 88% of their peers.
H/T
2. “Collagen banking” is beauty’s newest spin on anti-ageing. A new skincare marketing term stands on the idea that customers can save up collagen now for later. Some critics call it pseudoscience.
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Always interesting. Thanks for the breath of ideas you share and the sharp summary points that make this so valuable.